After spending 10 years cruising the Pacific Northwest, Betsy & I decided to return to Mexico for the winter. Our plan was to bring Mystic down the coast from Sidney, BC to San Francisco in late August, continue down to San Diego in October before the winter storms start, and then leave San Diego for La Paz in November at the end of hurricane season in Mexico.
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Lach and Kenny on watch
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From Anacortes to San Francisco, Betsy & I were accompanied by Becky & Lach McGuigan, long time friends and sailors who spent many years cruising their C&C 49 in the South Pacific. Also joining us was Kenny Murray, an experienced skipper who knows every inch of the coast and is always a pleasure to have aboard.
Other than putting into Brookings for a couple of days to let a gale blow by, we had an easy ride down the coast -- from Brookings to San Francisco, we didn’t see a single whitecap. The most stressful part of the whole trip was navigating through a sail board race under the Golden Gate bridge. This guy seemed intent on becoming prop fodder!
For the Santa Cruz to San Diego leg, it was a bachelor crew including CCA member Bill Forsythe and my neighbor and close friend, Larry Lopp. We left Santa Cruz early on the morning of Oct 13th and cleared Pt. Conception at 8:00am the following day. We enjoyed overnight stops in Ventura and Catalina, where my son Derek and his girlfriend joined us for an all-too-brief visit.
We entered San Diego bay just as a couple of nuclear subs were leaving. As a special courtesy to the navy, I moved right over to the starboard side of the channel. That wasn’t good enough for the Coast Guard chase boats: they wanted me completely out of the channel and practically on the rocks. Since the boomers had enough fire power on board to obliterate half the planet, I decided to comply.
We entered San Diego bay just as a couple of nuclear subs were leaving. As a special courtesy to the navy, I moved right over to the starboard side of the channel. That wasn’t good enough for the Coast Guard chase boats: they wanted me completely out of the channel and practically on the rocks. Since the boomers had enough fire power on board to obliterate half the planet, I decided to comply. 